So far from God

Overshadowed by the cataclysmic Civil War only thirteen years later, the Mexican War has been practically forgotten in the United States. Through the years, despite our growing interest in Mexico, it is rarely mentioned. And when the subject comes up, it nearly always deals with the questionable manner in which it came about. More specifically, was the United States right in sending Zachary Taylor to the Rio Grande in early 1846, thus provoking war with Mexico? Opinions vary. The omission of such events as the Mexican War from the American consciousness does history injustice. Wars as such may best be forgotten, but the period of the Mexican War was an important era, one of upheaval, of passion, of heroism, of bitterness, and of triumph. The cost in American lives was staggering. Of the 104,556 men who served in the army, both regulars and volunteers, 13,768 men died, the highest death rate of any war in our history. The period between 1844 and 1848 was a significant time, not something to be relegated to the attic of memory. The fact is that Mexico stood in the way of the American dream of Manifest Destiny. Although that dramatic, pious term was of relatively recent coinage in 1845, the idea of expansion westward to the Pacific had long been in the American mind. It is generally assumed that the annexation of Texas to the Union, finally accomplished on July 4, 1845, was the cause of the war between the United States and Mexico in 1846. But the act of annexation itself was an artificial issue, and even after annexation had been accomplished, war might have been averted. Looking back, one is tempted to consider the outcome of the Mexican War as a foregone conclusion, to regard the unbroken string of North American victories as easy. It was not so; the success of American arms represented a remarkable feat. Because of language, distance, and, above all, the paucity of Mexican writing on the Mexican War, this story is told largely from the North American viewpoint. The